Hoping to find ways of rescuing the San Joaquin County Fair, four committees have been created to tackle the problems of declining attendance and falling revenue. Residents unable to attend a Monda...

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Solution seekers

Hoping to find ways of rescuing the San Joaquin County Fair, four committees have been created to tackle the problems of declining attendance and falling revenue. Residents unable to attend a Monday night organizing meeting can still join a committee.

Goal: Recommend a program that is financially sustainable, meets trends and will increase paid attendance.

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STOCKTON - An overflow crowd of San Joaquin County residents was told Monday night that they hold the future of the county fair in their hands.

"We have a steep hill to climb. I'm not going to sugarcoat it," said Brian May, a Sacramento-based consultant with 24 years of experience with Cal Expo.

"We are unlikely to have the same fair as we've been having for 153 years," May said. "We need to rebuild the fair."

With that, May discussed the grim reality of the Stockton-based fair's recent decline:

» A precipitous attendance drop in June to 65,000 people, resulting in a $15,000 deficit from the fair.

» Revenue losses six of the past seven years.

» No cash reserves.

» A 10-year staffing decline from 37 full-time employees to nine.

Almost 200 people crowded inside Winners Gaming & Sports Emporium at the fairgrounds to show their support and to sign up for one of four committees that have been created to seek answers and, as May put, "find the way forward."

The fair, part of California's 2nd District Agricultural Association, is governed by a nine-member board of directors appointed by the governor. Board members will sit "silently" on each committee. "We don't want to bias the conversation," May said.

He was quick to point out that the fairgrounds are different than the fair. The property itself hosts 420 events a year and attracts more than 400,000 visitors.

"The fairgrounds can survive, but not well, without the fair," he said. "We do not have enough cash to produce a fair in 2014. It takes a lot of money to get a fair prepped and ready."

May outlined three critical questions that need to be answered by the end of the year: 1. how to produce a fair, 2. what it's going to look like and 3. how to generate the necessary cash flow.

He said it was wrong to do comparisons with other counties, adding that in recent years, several other fairs in California have faced similar financial problems.

May, calling for new thinking and ideas, challenged the crowd to abandon what he called the Montgomery Ward syndrome. "We do things the same every year. We need to be smarter."

He also outlined some of the challenges ahead.

Even though many people have said its location is the problem, the fair is not leaving its southeast Stockton location at the corner of Airport Way and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Because of scheduling set by the state, horse racing has been split from a June fair. That is not expected to change.

The fair does not have enough money to pay for "big-name" entertainment acts.

After outlining those realities, May and board President Nanette Martin of Tracy sent community members in attendance, most of them representing agriculture, to the four corners of the Winners Gaming & Sports Emporium.

During a question-and-answer period, two people asked about issues not scheduled to be addressed by the committees: precise accounting practices and perceived security problems.

Kerri Tapia, a Manteca resident who lives just off Airport Way, wasn't at Monday night's meeting. And she hasn't attended the county fair for years.

"I used to go regularly," she said. "The entertainment programs were a draw for us. But over the years, the fair has gone downhill. The location is a detriment. You kind of feel unsafe.

"It's really sad. For me to go back, depends. They need to do something."